Parents of French coma patient vow to fight European Court ruling that he should be allowed to die

The Catholic parents of a Frenchman left in a coma after a motorbike accident have vowed to fight a decision by the European Court of Human Rights that his life support machine be turned off.

In an emotional interview with The Sunday Telegraph in the wake of Friday’s landmark ruling on her son Vincent, Viviane Lambert claimed the court had ignored signs that her son was showing gradual signs of recovery, and had created a dangerous precedent for families in similar predicaments.

“This is nothing less than hidden euthanasia,” she said. “It’s scandalous. They are condemning my son to death.”

The fate of Mr Lambert, who has been in a coma for seven years after suffering brain damage in a 2008 motorcycle accident, has torn his family apart and sparked a fierce euthanasia debate in France.

His wife Rachel and six of his eight siblings agree with doctors who said there is no chance of recovery, and want to to stop the intravenous food and water that is keeping him alive.

But his mother, along with her husband and two of her son’s other siblings, have been battling in the courts to keep him alive, arguing that he is suffering from a “handicap” rather than an “incurable brain disease”.

“Vincent has progressed gradually, since Christmas he can now lift his right leg,” Mrs Lambert said. “We are with him every day, we have contact with him through his eyes, through music. When we put on music that he likes, Vincent reacts, he shows emotion.

“We are not giving up, we are going to fight this unjust decision.”

Viviane Lambert, the mother of Vincent Lambert holds a photograph of her son

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Friday that the decision taken by Mr Lambert’s wife to stop intravenously feeding him did not violate European rights laws.

Twelve of the 17 judges at the court in Strasbourg voted for Lambert to be allowed to die. But five dissenting judges condemned the decision, saying that with it the court had “forfeited” the title it had bestowed upon itself as the “conscience of Europe.”

The ruling is also likely to set a precedent across Europe for other cases in which families and doctors are in dispute over how long patients in a vegetative state should be kept alive.

Mrs Lambert said the ruling sent a “grave” message to other families with members in “a similar situation to Vincent or worse. “These families will feel totally helpless,” she said. “We are fighting for Vincent and for the others.”

However, Mrs Lambert’s plans to battle on through the domestic French courts look difficult.

Laurent Pettiti, the lawyer for Mr Lambert’s wife, said it was hard to imagine a decision against Europe’s highest law courts could be overturned.

Mr Lambert is unlikely to be taken off life support right away. The doctor who made the original recommendation that he should be allowed to die no longer works with him, and so it is up to the new medical team in the hospital in Reims where he is being treated to make a decision.

“For us, he is the victim of mistreatment,” said Mrs Lambert, who has moved to Reims to be near her son. “Vincent has not had physiotherapy for more than two years... We want to move him to a more suitable institution whose head of service has examined him and defends our point of view.”

Bernard Jeanblanc, the head doctor at the Strasbourg clinic where Lambert’s parents want him moved, said the patient was “not in a vegetative state” but had a degree of consciousness which enabled him to interact with his environment.

The legal drama began in January last year, when the patient’s doctors, supported by his wife, decided to stop the intravenous food and water. But his parents won a court application to stop the plan, calling it “akin to torture”.

In an appeal, the French supreme administrative court, known as the State Council, ordered three doctors to draw up a report on Mr Lambert’s condition. In June, they ruled that the decision to withdraw care from a man with no hope of recovery was lawful.

Lambert’s parents then took the case to the European Court of Human Rights, which ordered France to keep Lambert alive while they deliberated on whether the State Council’s decision was in line with the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Strasbourg court heard that Lambert had told his wife during a conversation that if ever he was left in a dependent state that he did not wish to be kept alive, and that he did not share his Catholic parents’ view that doctors should respect the “sanctity of life”.

It concluded that France’s courts had “complied with their positive obligations flowing from article 2 of the convention”, which deals with the right to life, in ruling to allow doctors to end Lambert’s life-support systems.

After Friday’s verdict, a tearful Rachel Lambert, 33, said: “My thoughts are very much with my husband. There’s no relief, no joy to express. We’d just like his will to be done.”

The ruling sets a legal precedent for all of the Council of Europe’s 47 member states.

“Now when a state wishes to modify its legislation on this issue, it will have to examine the principles solemnly posed in this ruling,” said Nicolas Hervieu, a European human rights court specialist.

The court has ruled on several cases of requests for the right to die, including that of Diane Pretty, a British woman suffering from motor neurone disease. British courts denied her 2002 wish to have a “quick death without suffering, at home surrounded by my family”, a ruling upheld by the European court.

The Lambert case is, however, the first such ruling by the European court on a request to keep a person in a vegetative state alive.

Euthanasia is illegal in France but Francois Hollande pledged in his 2012 presidential campaign to to ease legislation dealing with the terminally ill.

French MPs voted overwhelmingly in March this year in favour of a law allowing medics to place terminally-ill patients into a deep sleep until they die.

The law also makes “living wills” - drafted by people who do not want to be kept alive artificially if they are too ill to decide - legally binding on doctors.

Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg as well as in the US states of Vermont, Oregon and Washington.